Be my shield, dudes
by Yggdrasil'sRoots
Summary: Darcy wakes up to find Bucky gone, but she comes up with a solution after Bucky tells her and Steve how he got the metal arm.


_**Disclaimer: I gotta stop with this, owning shit is overrated**_

_**Also I made myself cry with this. You are forewarned.**_

_**And my title is dumb but I don't care so there.**_

Bucky is having one of those days. Again. He had woken up multiple times from nightmares, and had given up completely at three am.

Darcy had awoken to him gone, and has wandered into the living room to find him hanging grumpily from the pull up bar over the door frame. Upside down.

"Hey." She leans against the sofa, sweatpants and tank top clad. "Whatcha doin'?"

Bucky frowns.

"Couldn't sleep." He drops from the bar, rights himself. Her expression softens, and she pads towards him, barefoot.

"I'm sorry, baby." She slides her hand onto his shoulder, and is completely unsurprised when he recoils from the contact on his metal arm.

"I...I don't..." He scowls, furrows his brows. She lets him think.

"You want breakfast?" She says, after a while, when he remains silent. He looks up. She thinks he still gets surprised that she wants to take care of him.

"I..yeah." He doesn't say any more, but settles himself on the couch, soon deep in thought. She bustles around the tiny kitchen, making sure to make noise. He gets twitchy when it's silent, thrown back to when his world was nearly always quiet.

So she clatters, which honestly, is what she does best, and sticks her Ipod in the dock, clicking on her Disney play list. Circle of Life comes on almost immediately, and she sings along quietly, because she does have neighbours. Bucky has relaxed, when she checks on him, and she fries bacon and scrambles eggs happily.

She also manages to sneakily text Steve.

_Come over. Bring paint._

This is a ritual, by now, texting Steve to come over. The paint thing is an idea she had a while back, and hasn't road tested yet.

Her phone buzzes against her thigh.

_Twenty minutes._

She makes extra. Steve eats like a horse, they both do, her boys. She bangs a plate a little, trying to get Bucky out of zoning without saying anything. Then she plates up, grabbing a fork and handing her boyfriend the food. He thanks her, and she doesn't think he realised he did so in Russian.

Bucky eats without speaking, and she lets him be, avoiding his metal arm, instead leaning against his other side.

She hops up at the knock on the door, and Bucky tenses.

"Who?" He asks.

"Relax, baby, it's just Steve." She opens the door, and Steve grins at her, holding up his box of paint.

"Hey, Steve-O." He says hoarsely.

"Hey, Buck." Darcy lets him in, setting the paint on the small table by the door, and grabbing a plate of food for Steve.

"Thanks." Steve chews thoughtfully on a piece of bacon, staring at Bucky as he in turn stares at nothing. Darcy strains to hear her Disney play list in the kitchen. Pocahontas, she thinks. Steve has polished the food off rapidly, so she picks up the plates and retreats to the kitchen, washing up, and turning up the music to give them their privacy. She can still hear them talking, two baritones laden with emotion, but she can't make out words.

Eventually, she has to return, and plonks herself down belligerently next to Bucky's metal arm. He flinches away, and she grabs his chin carefully, knowing he can be set off by the most random things. He looks back at her, and she brushes a kiss against his lips gently.

"Talk to me, handsome." She smooths his hair away from his forehead. He had cut it when he got his memory back, when Steve had found him in Romania. "I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong, Bucko." He rests his forehead against her shoulder, and she wraps herself around him as best she can with the weird angle. She can feel him grimacing into her skin.

"The arm." He says finally. She waits. Steve looks ridiculously fond at the other end of the couch. She doesn't think anyone is more excited for them to be together than him.

Eventually Bucky continues.

"The arm doesn't feel like part of me, even though it is, and if it were gone I'd just be useless." She rubs his back, a wordless encouragement. "I wake up in the night having nightmares about how I got it."

Darcy holds her breath. He hasn't told her this particular story yet, although she had an inkling that his arm bothered him.

"When I fell from the train, I hit rocks on the way down, and the bones in my arm, they got smashed. Pulverised, their doc said." _Their,_ she knows, means Hydra. "So they amputated. And when I woke up, my arm was gone. They hadn't fitted this yet, so I just saw space, where my arm should have been, you know?" From the look on Steve's face, he hasn't heard this either.

"I'm sorry, baby." She whispers. He turns his face a little, pressed his nose into her neck.

"So, my arm is gone. And I have no idea, where I am, or what is happening, and I freak out. And they don't even bother sedating me, they just strap me down, wheel me into theatre, and start taking the bandages off." His voice is harsh, and she has a dreadful feeling she knows where this story is going. "And they rip the stitches out, and it hurts so much, and they bring something in, and I'm screaming and screaming, and they stick things in me, and I pass out for a minute, and they shove these metal _things_ into what's left of my shoulder blade when I wake up, and clip these little pins into my chest and then they press a button, and the pins clamp down, and I can feel thousands of little somethings wriggling around in me. They told me later they were fake nerve endings, so I could move the arm myself, but all I could think is that they burned. All the way up my neck, into my head, and in my chest and ribs, just burning. And then they got a blowtorch out." Darcy is crying, by now, and so is Steve. But Bucky ploughs on. He seems to want it out in one go, like tearing off a band aid.

"And they burn all around the edge of the arm where it joins my chest., melting the metal into me so the seam closes up and stuff, I guess. And I was so loopy by then, that I couldn't feel anything, but I could smell my flesh burning." He ends with a shuddering sigh, blinking wet onto her collarbones. "So, nightmares, you know?" He laughs self deprecatingly.

"Bucky." Steve says, and he's crying, and so is Bucky, and Darcy has a wild thought that they could fill a swimming pool with their tears, the three of them.

It takes them a long time to cry themselves out, and they're exhausted by the end of it.

"Goddamn it, baby, I am so sorry." Darcy presses kisses to every bit of skin she can find.

"It isn't your fault, Darce." Bucky murmurs. Steve hauls the pair of them into a rough hug, and Darcy bites her lip to stop herself from crying again.

"Oh my god, we're a mess." She tells them. "But I do have something I think might help, with the feeling like the arm is yours." Pulling away from them, she leaves them snuggling on the couch, and fetches Steve's paints.

"Ta da!" She says weakly. Bucky sits up.

"Paints?" Steve is grinning, and Bucky looks confused, but willing to let her do whatever he thinks she's up to.

"Steve-O, you're up." Steve sits on Bucky's left side, next to his metal arm, and gets various colours out, several brushes, and a cup.

"Would you mind getting me some water, Darcy?" She nods, hops up, fills the cup and races back, trying not to spill water on their new carpet. She had picked it out last week, with Bucky draping himself over her back, bored out of his mind, but grateful for the normality.

Steve starts to paint on the metal arm, grinning from ear to ear, and Darcy kisses Bucky on the cheek.

"Darce?" Bucky asks.

"Okay, so I knew you didn't feel like the metal arm is really yours, so I figured we'd make it yours. We can get Tony to make some designs permanent, if you like? Like tattoos, but on metal. And I know you hate the star. I have an idea about that." Bucky stares at her for a moment, then leans forward and captures her in a chaste, but passionate kiss.

"Hey!" Steve yelps. "I'm working here!" He puts a heavy New Yorker twang on the words.

"I knew showing you that movie would influence you." Darcy laughs, once Bucky leans back. "I'm a terrible person, I corrupted Captain America." Steve snorts, but goes back to where he is painting a pin up girl that looks suspiciously like Darcy. When he is done, she steals a paint brush, and find blue paint, and begins painting. When she is done, Bucky is failing to hold back tears, and Steve hasn't even tried to.

She has painted a blue ring around the star. Now the star has been turned into Steve's shield.

A week later, Tony makes it permanent.

Bucky gets the pin up Darcy tattooed on his back the next day, by none other than Clint.

And when Bucky gets down on one knee a year later, he holds the ring up with the metal arm. Darcy cries through her 'yes' and they break a table when Bucky tries to catch them on his stronger arm.

They get married six months after that, and Steve is Bucky's best man. Darcy is resplendent in her dress, and Tony cries.

When Darcy gives birth for the first time, she hands Bucky their daughter and he cradles her with his metal arm carefully.

Happily ever after, for now.

After all, they work for an intelligence agency that was corrupted by the men who pitched two best friends against each other.

What can possibly go wrong?


End file.
